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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <1379@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Aug-85 22:31:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1379
Posted: Sun Aug 25 22:31:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 02:19:57 EDT
References: <599@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 41

In article <599@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:

>I note that an interesting consequence of Charley's view is that man is
>nothing more than an assemblage of chemicals. (Maybe some good has come
>from Rosen's and my postings!) As an analogy one could consider a stack
>of coins, say, and have some klutz knock them over. The stack is rebuilt,
>but the question is whether or not it is the "same" stack, in the same
>sense as that for a similar one that existed all the while.

Wishful thinking: it's like saying that a robot chess player is "just a bunch
of ICs".  The huge volume of stories concerning the transmission of minds
from one body to another indicates that people do not really believe that a
mind is a bunch of chemicals any more than they believe that a chess program
is a bunch of ICs (or take the reduction to an even more absurd level, a
bunch of electrical charges).  The pejorative phrasing clearly indicates that
Padraig would rather have us overlook the absolute importance of the 
ORGANIZATION of those chemicals.  The fact that people can talk seriously
about transferring people's minds (and one assumes, the essential person)
into computers indicates that, not only can in fact say that a person is NOT
just chemicals, but even that the essential nature of a person is
immaterial-- since it is information, and not matter or energy.  It it
certainly beyond contest that the information represented in the mind is an
essential component of a person, so that "just a bag of chemicals" he ain't.

>I have no idea why he
>opts for denying the existence of a soul since it presents a simple
>and "natural" explanation for his scenario, and is just as credible.

Newtonian physics is also simple, and natural, and wrong.  The point is not
whether or not I "accept" an explanation.  The point is that Padraig is
demanding that this explanation be accpeted, AND NO OTHER.  Since he has
absolutely no objective evidence to work from, he has no basis to either
assert or deny ANY hypothesis about "life after death", especially since the
root idea comes out of a religious domain where we readily admit that we use
the term without any precise notion of what we mean by it.  I choose not to
believe in souls, but on rather different grounds, which Padraig has already
stated his lack of interest in.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe

  The wind blows where it pleases